Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Year Five: Reflections

I apologize for the typos, I can’t afford a copy editor. I
also appreciate the kind words, encouragement and compliments I’ve gotten in
person and by email. I’m not sure exactly what service Dislocations actually
provides, but it’s good to receive genuine appreciation. Originality and depth
is something I strive towards and it’s nice to both have that acknowledged and
to know that many appreciate such aspirations. Last year I passed 100,000
vistors or readers or however the blog-stats are interpreted.

God Bless you all

This may be the last one, by the way.

THE FINAL DISLOCATIONS!

I do not want to make such a grand statement – because,
really, who knows how one will feel come any given morning – and it’s not that
any hiatus is being planned – but the fact of the matter is that that each year
I’ve written fewer blogs posts. This feeling has been nagging me, that maybe I’ve
to the end of the blog format. Things I feel like writing about now, ideas that
are coming, do not lend themselves to Dislocations posts.

Maybe blog notions will come again. Maybe I’ll just do
pictures with funny captions, or maybe start another blog with a different
mission than Dislocations. People have said to me, I love your blog about
Jersey City. I thank them, but this blog was never really about our isthmus, it’s
just mainly set in Jersey City. Ultimately, my statement is about the human
condition, our experience of mortality, how we reconcile the need for community
with our limited ability of understanding – we really can know nothing other
than the self. Indirectly though, maybe it is about Jersey City, and maybe I do
not have much else to say, especially about what fascinates me the most,
ordinary life. Noticing anew things we experience every day. It’s those
moments, the ones we hold in common, that I fnd the most revelatory. That keeps
me going, gets me through.

I’m done. Okay, I’m not saying I’m done. Just kinda done. Maybe.

Maybe I no longer feel the same Dislocation that inspired me
five years ago to launch this endeavor.

Without a doubt, the most fateful blog (s) was a pair I
wrote about White Eagle Hall. Turns out, they were so well-received by the
principals have asked me to work for Jersey City Theater Center, the
organization creating a Theater & Arts complex in this neck of Newark
Avenue. It’s very exciting and I’ve become their quasi-chronicler as well as
publicist and general writer.

Basically though, I had been passing the four heads on this
building near-daily for so long I had to find out who they were. The research
was fun and included input from the Association of American Polish Historians,
and the blogs formed the basis of an academic article available here.

A bad fire on Grove Street led to these empty lots and some memorable
ponderings.

Jersey City got a new mayor this year, don’t you know. Steve
Fulop, nice guy, fast talker, one of the leading young democratic politicians
who are exemplifying that generation X is now taking the reigns of power. His inauguration
was a city-wide block party, and his man of the people rhetoric struck a chord,
and a pre-GWB-Gate Christie showed why his appeal is wider in person than on TV
or YouTube. Is Fulop Bloomberg or DiBlasio or is it enough for the majority of
the newly arrived that he isn’t Healy? But Fulop already performed a historical
task no other media outlet deemed fit to acknowledge – Jersey City’s firstJewish Mayor – his family are Holocaust Survivors – lit the city Menorah. In the
1990s, Jersey City became the test case that led to permitting municipal governments
to exhibit holiday decorations. Nobody
else appreciated the multi-layered irony of this moment.

Murals have become the cornerstone of the art scene in Jersey
City and some special city funding implemented a mural project, here are two
examples, here and here, of some of the most compelling.

Paint the Car was this interactive art event at the regular
interactive art event known as Creative Grove, a sort of artsy flea market that
survives in town despite of its misguided detractors. The point, paint art and graffati on a car. FIGHT CONFORMITY NOW!!!

One of the greatest record stores in the history of record
stores closed, JR Music, which is by the World Trade Center, downsized last
year and will probably close this year. I happen to go to the old, two-level
location on Record Store Day last year, the last Record Store Day of the oldlocation, whoo hoo! JR is a series of stores that sells appliances, electronic
equipment, computers and CDs, but now that series has been consolidated into
one brick and mortar store. I bought a couple of CD players there, recently a
computer monitor. But they too are moving their selection online. Kind of sucks
if your mouse decides to go kaput and you’re on deadline; I remember going
there and finding a dozen different types of mouse to purchase. Now there’s
one. Used to go to the record store, buy some CDs – they had a deep inventory
and were really cheap –I got a Roy Acuff for $4.95! – but now everything is one
location, they phased out the jazz selection. I get the feeling they are
selling off the rest of the stock and that will be day. A way of life gone forever. This blog was not intended to be but turned out as both tribute and obituary.

I love writing about Shakespeare and I caught some really fantastic
summer productions, a really great King Lear up in Inwood, so far up the isle
of Manhatto that my nose bled. A good buddy, Bob Armstrong, played the titular
role of the man who usurped his life. On the Jersey Side, the Hudson
Shakespeare Company presented the rarely performed Henry VIII – not the Bard’s
best history, but this production made me realize how it is a significant
footnote to the Henriad and its two Richard bookends. The same group later presented
a remarkable interpretation of Macbeth and in October, presented Titus Andronicus
in a cemetery production. I love Titus, and while I quibble with the
black-comic interpretation, this was a very satisfying Titus.

My music obituaries are part-memoir. Musical tastes – what
makes up our own personal soundtrack and how that soundtrack changes as we
follow our journey through life – is an area of interest for me. Why we listen being
as important as what we listen to is an idea I keep coming back to even. RayManzerak and Lou Reed provoked a reverie and Pete Seeger’s passing invoked a
memory of my interviewing this friendly great man when I was in College, and I
was writing it up, I had insight into his momentary bizarre behavior, something
about Phil Ochs.

He may not have died this year, but the Cohen Brothers
released that film based on his life and his being in the news sparked a memoryof Dave Von Ronk.

Local singer songwriter Kelly Saint Patrick performed a
splendid set at Groove on Grove, probably the best show of that summer series.

Dislocations revived my interest in photography as a hobby.
I take pictures and think of funny or interesting at least, captions. A puddleforms in this lot after every rain. When the light is right, the puddle
reflects our world back to us. This lot was paved over a few months later. The
grass is gone, but the puddle still forms and the reflection return.

The place to be come mid-August is Sixth Street for The
Feast. This year I “covered” some of the processions and other events as well
as the evening bacchanals.

Winter. We just got through a doozy. I happen to be in the
New Jersey Room at the main branch of our public library on a day of a real bad
snow storm and a great shot of Van Vorst Park. Then I walked through the
unblemished snow of the park, wondering about the illusion of infinite, icywhiteness.

Tachair Book Shoppe held its first annual theater festival,
some really compelling performance.Dare
I say surprisingly fantastic.

Local artist, Kayt Hester, works in tape and celebrated the
7-year-return of the Cicada at a special show. A few months later, she had agallery show in NYC, but this space had large glass walls that Kayt had some
fun with, messing with our perception of what is 3-D.

Living in Jersey City, warm-weather festivals are a way of
life. You see family and friends and neighbors and have some fun and eat food
you only eat once a year. The Santa Cruzan festival, a Filipino party, at the
end of May, kicks off the season. The 2014 edition – the 35th – was
really fun. Jersey City has one of the largest populations of Filipino
Americans in the country. What a blessing. What a fine bunch of folks.

I’m a film-buff. A cineaste. I’ve been seriously studyingthe western – by which I mean, I’veseen
a ton of them and watch many several times. The genre’s best decade is the
1950s, and here’s a list of some more obscure Westerns that are noteworthy. If
you haven’t seen The Searchers or Seven Men From Now, watch those agreed upon
classics first and then you’ll be ready to appreciate the greatness of the
american film-making these 10 films achieve.

Here’s another piece of news, about newspapers, you will
only find out about on Dislocations. The Jersey Journal moved their offices to Secaucus,
and bequeathed more than a dozen metal filing cabinets of a meticulously kept clip
file to the Jersey Room at the Main Branch of the Jersey City Library. You want
to see the history of Hudson County, get a feel of what was important in the
daily life, thus get an authentic peak into an area, spend some time with these
unique files.

Stephanie Riggi’s work I’ve seen around but I never had the
pleasure of meeting this artist until last year.Her illustrations are vivid and twisted, and
she possesses one of the brightest pallets in town

Luca Casulito is a real go-getter in Jersey City, involved
with the arts and her own business. But she also happened upon this process of
creating this somewhat bizarre, but very moody and provocative abstract pieces,
art objects. She’s always interesting to talk to, but talking about her art is
a rarity. There’s a freshness and originally in her abstractions worth noting.

The 313 Gallery is a permanent gallery, meaning they are not
a bar and have regular hours – albeit only on weekends – and that is rare and
perhaps a first. Also it’s a really interesting space, whose history you can
only read about here, and this show featured Bunny Pearlman, whose diverse
array included water colors and found art.

Eva – this a German pop artist – had a wonderful show at the
now defunct, gone but not forgotten, Fish with Braids gallery.

Art Activates is a mural project for alleys. This was fun to
write. I not only wanted to report on this unique, urban beautification project
as well as the really fantastic art that has been erected on these rarely seen
surfaces, but I tried to convey the experience of seeing this art unfold as you
stroll through the alley.